Helen Hath No Fury (9 page)

Maybe the bustling market would fill me up with itself, and for a few minutes, I could stop obsessing about the two lost women: Helen and Petra.

Maybe. It was certainly worth a try.

P
HILADELPHIA IS REALLY A COLLECTION OF SMALL TOWNS
called neighborhoods, and my village in the heart of the city is no exception.

And when you further narrow the population to middle-class women who don’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from—aside from the sense of which store will deliver or produce it—the odds are actually in favor of meeting someone you know when you’re in a public space devoted to food.

So it wasn’t peculiar or even unusual, and it surely wasn’t an omen or a sign of anything that I bumped into another villager at the Market.

I’d wandered through the aisles, cheered by the Market’s very existence. I walked as quickly as possible past the Lancaster farmers and their sticky buns, shoofly pie, and freshly baked pretzels. I felt irresistibly drawn to Iovine Brothers Produce, to orderly piles of vegetables blazing in crayon colors. If I couldn’t have that straight-ahead life, I could have healthy. At that moment, I believed that if I ate only primary colors and shapes, circles and ovals, my life would take on the purity of what I ingested.

History suggested that by the time I got home and began chopping and steaming, I’d have lost my enthusiasm—I’ve had these fits before—and, often, my very appetite for vegetables. Didn’t matter.

None of that stopped me ogling everything plump and perishable, the better for it to die a slow death at the back of my refrigerator.

I stood in front of exotic mushrooms—amazed by hedgehogs and red-skinned lobsters, chanterelles, black trumpets—and decided on a wild mushroom sauce on pasta that evening. Maybe mushrooms and eggplant. And peppers? I swooned into a delirious vegetable reverie.

“Mandy!”

My name ruptured my happy cocoon and mood. I was not meant to meditate, not even about pasta toppings.

My fellow forager was Wendy Loeb, who smiled and waved a hand holding a bunch of asparagus. The engagement ring that had been worn for ten years sparked and glittered with each motion. I mentally added tender spring tips to my mushroom medley, but left a five-carat diamond off the shopping list. “One sec!” she called.

Wendy was a cheery woman who preferred the sunny side of the street, which is possibly why she was able to overlook the duration of her engagement and her fiancé’s less-than-savory reputation.

She may have been shopping for asparagus, but she’d already invested in handmade chocolates. “I should not have bought these,” she said as she bustled over. “I swore that God could strike me dead if I ate even one piece. It’s for company, I told myself, and I knew I was lying even as I said it. If just once that lightning bolt would come through the window like my mother promised, I’d change my ways. For now, I’ll stop weighing myself, is all.”

She was short and round and it worked and seemed right, but she was always planning to change her dimensions. “Whatcha got?” She peered into my tote. “Oh,
sure,” she said. “No wonder you don’t worry about your weight.”

I had three slender eggplants, those wild mushrooms, a head of elephant garlic, and four tomatoes. I was already experiencing mild postveggie
tristesse
, but in a mean-spirited lack of sisterhood, I didn’t let on. Wendy wouldn’t be around when later tonight I’d curse myself for not having bought cake or the fabulous exotic takeout that was everywhere around me.

She suggested we have a drink of something, and I realized how thirsty I was for both drink and the comforts of companionship. We found a spot at the Down Home Diner’s counter. Behind us, the splendid old jukebox played a Fifties tune with lots of
uh-ohs
as lyrics. I couldn’t believe any teens had ever liked such a stupid song.

I’m not sure why I thought this would be time out, a respite from the confusions of late. I’d bumped into Wendy before around town. Apparently, real estate wheeling and dealing didn’t occupy all day every day, and Wendy loved to shop for almost anything. So in the past, we’d had enjoyable drinks of coffee, wine, or as today, iced tea. I expected only that. Normal schmoozing. Wendy ordered a cruller along with her drink. “I hate to occupy a seat for such a pathetically small purchase as an iced tea,” she said. She’d said something along those lines wherever we’d taken our breaks in the past.

Normal.

We weren’t more than three or four sips into our tea when Helen’s name came up. However, that was within the realm of normal and ordinary. Helen was part of what bridged the two of us, and she was on both our minds.

Wendy leaned forward. “Listen,” she said, and because I was already listening, I knew we were leaving the predictable paths. I didn’t know
where
we were headed,
but I knew we weren’t staying on familiar turf. Good-bye normal.

“I don’t want to sound like a gossip, or be catty,” she said, “but there’s something you should know, given that we’re trying to piece together what was real and what wasn’t about Helen. Trying to understand how she could have done it.”

“
If
she did it.”

“I wasn’t going to say that,” Wendy said even more softly. She gnawed on the cruller, waiting until she swallowed and drank more tea before continuing. “It sounds—it suggests stuff I don’t want to think about.”

I waited.

“So you’re probably talking to everybody.”

“I haven’t,” I said. “In fact, I haven’t contacted anybody yet. Happened to bump into Roxanne yesterday when I tried to—”

Wendy sighed and nodded, as if that’s what she’d expected. And dreaded. “Roxanne,” she said. “You know, I love her. I love how she dresses and thinks, and I don’t want this to sound the wrong way if I say you’ll have to take whatever she said—whatever she might say—with a grain of salt. With a whole shaker of salt.”

She was going to tell me those rumors about Roxanne and Ivan, and I didn’t want her to. If Roxanne had been right about the ruined partnership, then maybe Wendy had things she’d as soon keep hidden, like a grievance against Helen, who’d squelched the deal.

Wendy looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I’m being … I just hate saying these things, but look, the thing is, I think Roxanne and Ivan Coulter may be more than friends again. You know they were an item in college, don’t you? I know that was long ago, but those things happen.”

“Why would you think that?”

“People talk. And Roxanne’s so desperate and needy this past year, and she mentions Ivan all out of proportion to his being her neighbor, or a piece of her past.”

“They’re friends. They were all friends.”

“True. Except … how friendly? She’s a woman alone, and those things happen.”

“You mean her husband traveling so much?”

Wendy sat back and looked at me, wide-eyed. “I can’t believe you bought her story,” she said. “I mean everybody knows.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“I feel as uncomfortable as you do,” Wendy said. “That’s why I did that song and dance before I started. But this isn’t gossip, Amanda. This is fact.”

“What is?” I glanced at my watch, then counted out coins and put my collection on top of my receipt. It had gotten damp at the edges from my iced-tea glass.

“Don’t rush away. I promise I’m not … let me ask you this. What do you know about Roxanne Parisi?”

I zipped my purse, thought fleetingly of the vegetables heating up in my tote, becoming ever less appetizing, and I shrugged. “That she’s a freelancer. Writes well. I’ve seen her articles in the
Inquirer Magazine
and elsewhere. That she’s got her own sense of style, her own way of painting her surroundings. That she has no kids and Larry travels a great deal for business. That I suspect her favorite color is peacock blue and she likes books that deal with women’s issues. But what does that say? How could I do that for anybody, truly describe them, say what I know? How could I do it for you?”

“Well, for starters, if you were describing me, you’d know I was engaged, but not married, right?”

I nodded.

“Roxanne is neither engaged nor married. Larry left her a year ago. He isn’t in Saudi Arabia. He’s twenty-five
minutes away in King of Prussia. With another woman. People have spotted him. At least three people in the book group that I know of.”

“But … she … the updates, the letters she mentions?”

Wendy shook her head. “He’s filed for divorce. She’s heartsick, and I think by now she may honestly believe he’s really far away. And that makes her much more desperate.”

“How could—if people saw him, if people knew she wasn’t being honest—why didn’t anybody ever say a word?”

Wendy smiled, rather wistfully. “Because we’re friends. Because we like her and this is part of her mourning process. Nobody’s saying it’s healthy to be in this degree of denial, but what good was it going to do to tell her secret? She knows that I know. I’ve suggested she go for counseling, but I don’t know if she has. She needs to do this, Mandy. Right now, she needs to believe what she needs to believe. It won’t matter—she’ll be divorced soon whatever she pretends.”

I had a lot to learn about friendship, not to mention what I had to learn about reality. And about who spoke truly and who twisted the facts to fit.

I felt dizzy. The iced tea had gone to my head.

“Y
OU SHOULD KEEP NOTES
,” M
ACKENZIE SAID AFTER
dinner. We sat happily satiated. The plates that had held my version of pasta primavera were empty, and only I gave a thought, I’m sure, to the surplus veggies that were, even now, facing fuzzy futures in my fridge.

Mackenzie wasn’t thinking about redundant produce. He was contemplating the tidbits I’d fed him along with the pasta—Roxanne on Helen and Ivan, Wendy on Roxanne, and Gretchen on me, with mention, too, of Ivan and the unknown book club member who made Helen
uncomfortable. “Given that they’re all contradictin’ each other, write down precisely who said what. Need to know the source before you know its worth, and soon, it’ll blur all up.”

I knew he was right. I was already less than totally sure who’d said what, or whether any specific piece of what had been said mattered.

“Decide later if it’s important. For now, note it all down. If it’s a rumor or hearsay, note that, too.”

I sighed. “It’s a puzzle, this portrait of Helen. I thought it would be less depressing. I mean of course it’s depressing—it’s dreadful. She’s dead and that’s all wrong. But now it’s more than that.”

He held up the wine bottle, offering a refill, and I nodded. “I’d think you’d enjoy the process, based on my past observation of you.”

I shook my head. “Those were different. Those were other people’s secrets.”

“So’s this one.”

“Not really. Those were other people’s people. These are my people, my book group. Mine. That makes everything anyone’s said so far disheartening.”

“Why so?”

“I want to believe people are what they say. I want to believe that Helen and Ivan Coulter had a good marriage, that Roxanne’s husband really does travel too much. I wanted to believe—”

“In the sanctity and public face of marriage? Of arrangements? With your book group as the shining example of wedded bliss?”

“Don’t start that up again. We’ve done this, Mackenzie.” Ever since his dinner with the much-married idiot friend, Mackenzie had been searching for antimarriage evidence. This morning, he’d read me an item about a man who’d blasted his wife and children into
eternity, then turned the gun on himself. When I commented that such stories were lamentably common, he’d said, “How true. My point, in fact.”

I forced us back on topic. “I want to believe in who people say they are. How they behave. How they react to what they read. I want to believe the evidence of my eyes and ears. I love the book group—and love what I thought was the feeling we have for each other. A warm respect and enjoyment. Bookfriends. Something pretty wonderful. Now, I don’t know what to think. Is my image of every single person going to turn out to be false?”

“Maybe not false. But somewhat created,” Mackenzie said. “We all wear public masks to some extent. Except for this guy,” and he chucked Macavity under his graying chin.

The cat occupied one of the chairs around the oak table. Biding his time, I knew, in the hopes a scrap would be left behind when I cleared the table—forbidden territory, but only when I was looking. “You’re a carnivore, dummy,” I reminded him. “You’re in for a big disappointment tonight.”

“The cat is what he is, and he’s delighted about it,” Mackenzie said. “And he expects that you are, too. Therefore, there’s no reason whatsoever for a secret.” They were ridiculously good buddies, my two Macs, forever purring at or praising one another. “But,” Mackenzie added, “cats are in a class by themselves.”

“So what are you saying? That I should teach my cat to read and form a feline book circle?”

“I’m sayin’ that what I’ve learned out there is that pretty much everybody has something they’d rather gloss over or bury. A secret. Except me, of course.”

I laughed. “You! That’s rich, Chaim! Oh, no—wait, I meant Canute. Hey—maybe your parents stuttered and that’s both your names—Canute Knute. It has a distinct
zing and rhythm, although I can see why you’d keep it your secret.”

“You have secrets, too, don’t you?”

“Me?” I was without guile. “I’m the sucker, that’s what makes me so angry. I’m the fall guy. An open book. I believe people.”

He raised one eyebrow. “No secrets, then?”

I thought of my hideous new understanding that I was becoming my mother, those Mackenzie hot flashes, unshared bursts of resentment about his skewed take on marriage. I wondered how many other secrets I had.

“Like I was sayin’, take notes. At some point you’ll see things that fit and things you should forget about because they’re one person’s gossip, not corroborated.”

“What about that
liar
graffiti outside Helen’s house?”
Canute Knute
beat a pleasant rhythm in my brain.

“I’m sure they’re makin’ note of it.”

“But what? What are they making of it?”

“Not my department. Not in fact a homicide case, at least not yet. Isn’t that what’s got you going? Isn’t that the point of exposing those secrets?”

A sudden realization produced a nervous mix of jubilation and anxiety. He wasn’t saying stop what you’re doing and leave those secrets alone. He was, in fact, prodding a bit, urging me to keep good notes, to remember the purpose of gathering information about Helen. “You aren’t discouraging me, are you? You’re actually, in your fashion,
encouraging
me. That isn’t like you, Mackenzie. What’s the story?”